


The Tale of Red-Handed Jill

by fresne



Category: Peter Pan (2003), Peter Pan - J. M. Barrie
Genre: Cat1, F/M, Misses Clause Challenge, Non-Canonical Character Death, Podfic, Podfic Available, Podfic Length: 30-45 Minutes, Yuletide Treat, wwi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-17
Updated: 2014-03-18
Packaged: 2018-01-04 21:56:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 6,395
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1086117
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fresne/pseuds/fresne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Now listen close, you land lubbers and you'll hear the tale of Red-Handed Jill and how she came to sail the seven seas and beyond.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 13

**Author's Note:**

  * For [astolat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/astolat/gifts).



> Just to be clear before starting, tag worthy activities don't start until Wendy is in her 20s. 
> 
> Character deaths refer to off screen WWI deaths on the Western front.

Wendy sat upon the crate for a very long moment. The Jolly Roger creaked all around her on the waves. The assembled pirates caught their breath as she said, "This is the story of a pirate. Her name was Red-Handed Jill."

"A girl pirate! Only a Wendy could think up something like that!" said the pirate with the pocked cheeks to the pirate with a braid at his temple.

"Hmmm…" said Captain James Hook. He paced slowly behind the other pirates. He was watching her with his dark blue eyes. The curls of his black wig made twisting flags in the breeze.

Wendy looked away blushing. She couldn't have said why. But she reasoned there nothing wrong with what she was doing. She was telling a story about pirates to pirates. There couldn't be anything wrong with that. "Now Red-Handed Jill's parents wanted her to grow up, so she ran away on a ship and became a pirate."

"Hmmm…" said Hook. The steel of his hook glinted in the sunlight as he stroked the line of his black moustache. "Growing up is such barbarous business. Full of inconvenience and blood." His voice sounded like the blue smoke that curled from the doubled cigars that he smoked from an ivory and gold holder.

"Red-Handed Jill got her name because of the blood she spilled. She wasn't afraid of a fight. In fact, she fought with both hands. In her right hand, she used a cutlass. In her left, she used the butcher's knife that she'd stolen the day she left home. It was the first thing that she stole, but it wasn't the last."

The pirates clapped, even though this wasn't even remotely the end of the story. The pirate with the matted blond hair said, "Captain, can we keep the Wendy? She's a wonderful prize."

"Shush," said Wendy, because it wouldn't do for the pirates to think they could interrupt her. "I'm telling a story."

"Sorry, Ma'am," said the pirate with the matted blond hair.

Hook's thin lips curled into a curving line.

Wendy blushed again. Although, she couldn't have said why.

A pirate with wooden leg hit the pirate with the matted blond hair and said, "Go on with the story, Mistress Wendy."

"Yes," said Hook. "Mistress Wendy. Pray. Do continue with your tale of blood on the high sea. Do tell, shall it end in a kiss?"

She narrowed her eyes. "One day Red-Handed Jill was sailing her ship, the Black Dream, across the West Indies out of the port on Skull Island."

A pirate with a wee parrot on his shoulder whispered, "Skull island! I've always wanted to go there."

"But what should she see, but a ripe treasure ship from the Spanish Main riding low on the water. She knew that its holds were full of gold. She ordered the Black Dream to full sail in pursuit."

"Red-Handed Jill's a captain now. Hmm…" said Hook, pacing the deck behind his gathered pirates listening to her story.

Wendy leaned forward. "The treasure ship couldn't move very fast, but what should she see on the far side of the ship, but another pirate ship!"

The pirate with the yellow matted hair gasped.

"She was determined that this other pirate ship would not get her prize. She fired on the treasure ship. She fired on the other pirate ship. She wasn't afraid to get blood on her hands. Not Red-Handed Jill." Wendy made a fist and shook it. She could see it her head. The ships racing across the blue sea. "The treasure ship's mast went down, and was dead in the water, but her cannon fire missed the other pirate ship. Now that they were closer, she could see it was her sworn enemy, Captain Gentleman Jack of the Blue Mermaid.

"Hmmm…" said Hook, pacing his slow way behind the pirates crowded on the deck. "I sense a kiss on the horizon."

She ignored him. She was ignoring Hook. She blushed. "Now both ships came up beside the treasure ship, and all the pirates boarded it."

The pirate with the yellow matted hair clutched at the wooden leg of the pirate with the wooden leg. 

"There were pirates fighting everywhere with the sailors on the treasure ship. And when the sailors were all dead, they started fighting each other." Wendy pointed at the pirates for emphasis. Each one in turn leaned towards her pointing finger. "Red-Handed Jill only had eyes for Gentleman Jack. They fought on the front of the deck. They fought on the back of the deck. They climbed the rigging and fought there. The sun was setting in the sky and still they were fighting. Below on the deck, all the other pirates stopped to watch. They fought with the wide white trail of the stars on the open sea as their only light. Finally, Gentleman Jack stumbled and almost fell, but she grabbed him by the sleeve, because she didn't want him to lose because he fell."

"Oh, good form," murmured Hook. His dark blue eyes were alight through the blue-smoke haze from his cigars.

She couldn't have said why she ended the story this way, but she said, "Red-Handed Jill pulled Gentleman Jack onto the rigging and she kissed him while holding a knife to his gullet to show that she'd won. Then she took the treasure from the ship and sailed away to have other adventures and face Gentleman Jack another day."

The pirates clapped.

"I said, it would end in a kiss," said Hook.

"It ended with Red-Handed Jill sailing away to other adventures," said Wendy. She got down off the crate. Her legs tingled with pins and needles and she almost stumbled on the deck.

Hook caught her arm and steadied her. His hand was calloused and warm. "A word, my dear." He curled his fingers through her arm, as if she were a lady at a party. He walked her towards his cabin. She went with him. She shivered. She couldn't have said why.

Hook let go of her arm once they were inside. Hook took off his hat with its wide brim and feather. He took off his wig. His hair was black in a simple braid down his back. He went to a cut crystal decanter, just like her father drank from in his study. Hook poured two small glasses.

"Oh, I'm not old enough to drink," said Wendy.

Hook held out a tiny red glass. "That is why I have poured you only a little. Just a taste."

Wendy bit her lip and took it. She tasted a tiny taste. She coughed. It tasted terrible.

Hook laughed and the sound curled against the walls of the tiny room. "So, Mistress Wendy. Is that the sort of story that you tell Peter?"

Suddenly, Wendy was very angry. "Peter, Peter, Peter. Is this all about Peter? I thought you wanted me to join your crew. Why you don't care about my storytelling at all."

Hook's thin lips curled back from his teeth. "I'm a pirate, Wendy. I want it all."

Wendy crossed her arms across her thin chest. "I'm not going to help you hurt, Peter."

"Then my dear, you will walk the plank. We'll see if that draws Peter out and makes him sad." Hook's blue eyes glittered in the candle light.

Wendy felt cold, because her story had become all about Peter and she hadn't wanted that at all.

As she went to walk the plank, something hurt in the centre of her chest, but she didn't know why. 

She couldn't have said what that feeling was when she saw Hook fall into the sea and the waiting jaws of the crocodile.

She only knew that she wanted to go home.


	2. 24

By the age of five, she'd had two brothers. By the age of thirteen, she'd gained six more. Lost boys from Neverland.

By age twenty-four, she was down to two again.

A letter crumpled in her shirt pocket as she worked. 

John was missing in action, but she knew what that meant.

Nibs. Slightly. Curly. the Twins.

Verdun. Marne. Ypres. Somme. 

The Darlings had given sons and brothers to each of these. Michael was alive as far as she knew somewhere on the Western Front. Tootles' head was ringing with shell shock. He sat in a hospital shivering. The sound of a footstep made him jump.

Wendy was tired. 

She wanted to forget everything and run away. She wanted that house in the woods with her pet wolf. She wanted to be a pirate. But growing up meant she couldn't have everything she wanted.

Still, when she'd joined the Land Army, she'd asked to be anywhere but on a farm where she could hear the boom of artillery. The West Country was certainly westerly and quiet.

Wendy put her hand on the small of her back and stretched. Around her wide fields rolled away as if to tumble into the westerly sea. She kept going. Guiding the plough behind her mule. It was hard boring work.

She told herself stories as she went. When she was done, she headed in to milk the cattle with the other Land Girls. They chattered as they worked. She was mostly silent. Moving her hands, now thick with callouses, in steady jerking motions.

Edna laughed and squirted a stream of milk into the mouth of a barn cat. Lady Caro laughed. "You are such a show off." She got a squirt of milk for her troubles. She wiped it off. "Mmm… make you think of anything."

"As if there were any men left," said Bernice.

Ada said, "Let's go into Portsmouth tonight."

Edna groaned. "We do that every Saturday night."

"Dear sweet Edna, there's no place else to go," drawled Lady Caro. Soon it was agreed that they'd head into town that night and have a few drinks at a few of the pubs. 

Every time, they went into town and she saw the port, Wendy thought of pirates and privateers. She expected to see a galleon sail into port, but she never did.

Every time, she started a new story in her head to pretend she could forget each letter as it came to crackle in her pocket until she could bear to burn it.

Bernice laughed, "You've got that look again. Wendy and her bad boys."

Wendy winked at her. She looked around the pub and while there weren't many men, there were still a few. She caught the eye of burly young man with a drooping right eye. His left eye was roving enough and he was soon buying her a gin and tonic, while her friends laughed in the background. Tupper, which surely wasn't actually his name, worked at the docks. He was coarse and had a cruel look about him. If her father could see her then, he'd fly into such a rage. 

She wished. 

She wished. 

She needed to forget.

Wendy finished her gin. "It's a little crowded in here. I've got to be back by midnight, but if you'd got someplace to go, maybe we could have another drink there."

"It's quiet enough out back." He put his hand on her leg.

Wendy shivered and she knew exactly why. It was not as if this was her first trip behind the Blue Mermaid. "That it is."

"Mistress Wendy," said a voice like blue smoke drifting over her shoulder, "you give yourself cheaply."

She turned to look and saw a figure from a half remembered dream. Hook should have looked ridiculous with his clothes out of another century. With his wild black curling wig and that hat. He smiled and Tupper was the ridiculous one. Snarling, "Shove off, you poofta. Find your own bird."

"Charming," Hook drawled. He lifted his hook, which glinted in the light just as Wendy remembered it. "We can, of course, fight for the honour of the lady's company, if you wish. You will come out the worse for it, I can assure you."

Tupper blanched. "Ah, fuck it. More birds than blokes these days." His walk to the door was more run than saunter.

Wendy paid him just that much attention. "I saw you die."

Hook's thin lips curved back from his teeth. "You saw me fall, which is a different thing entirely. A hook was not the best tool for cutting myself free from the belly of the beast, but it was adequate to the task."

Wendy realized that she was gapping at him like a fish. She closed her mouth and firmed it up. She glanced back at her friends, who were giggling at her like a bunch of school girls. As if they'd never seen a pirate before. She said, "I haven't seen Peter in years." She made her face move in something like a smile. "I'm too old for his games."

Hook inclined his head and the feather that should have looked silly bobbed in the air. "You're not too old for my purposes. Here you are, in a long time den of piracy and villainy, accepting assignations with unworthy men. Wendy, your first time should be on silk sheets, not behind a tavern."

She raised her chin. "Not my first time."

"Ah, but let us say that it is. Let's say that your first time is between silk sheets on a pirate ship. But then, you are the storyteller. You tell me, Wendy. It's a little crowded here and I have some place private for us to go and have a drink."

She thought about it.

She decided it wasn't worth worrying about.

She nodded once. "Sure. It's my first time. I'm seventeen and I have eight brothers at home, and a father, who if they find out I've been ravished by a pirate, will come to rescue me."

He offered her his arm. "Then I should kidnap you with alacrity."

She slipped her arm through his. The velvet felt soft and smooth brushing against the bare skin of her arm. She shivered, but it wasn't from cold.

Edna came over. She said, "Wendy, you can't go off with this guy." She flickered a glance at Hook. "He's clearly a nutter."

"Young lady, we have not been introduced, and if you'll forgive me for doing so, I am Captain Hook and as such a gentleman and a pirate." Hook bowed over Edna's hand, who goggled at him.

"Not helping," said Wendy. She squeezed his arm. "Its fine, Edna. I know him. We're going to catch up. Don't wait for me. I'll catch a ride with the milk truck." It wouldn't be the first time she'd had to do that.

But no, that wasn't the story she was telling herself, as she walked out the door of the Blue Mermaid on Captain Bloody Hook's arm. 

In the story she was telling of herself, she was seventeen or younger and innocent of the ways the world hurt. She was almost a woman and thought she was grown up, but she wasn't.

She was walking wide eyed to her fate. She focused on the feel of velvet against the bare skin of her arm. She focused on the warmth seeping through. There was the Jolly Roger at the docks. The deck was crowded with pirates. They all looked exactly as she remembered them. The pirate with the one braid. The pirate with the matted yellow hair. They hadn't aged a day. These men would never go to war. They'd never drown in mud. They wouldn't die of a fever. A heart attack wouldn't cut them down when they lost another son.

They'd just keep sailing on.

Suddenly, she hated them. She hated all of them and everything. She hated herself for growing up. If she'd just left them all in Neverland. If she'd just...

That was not the story that she was telling herself. In the story that she was telling herself, she walked with Hook into his cabin and stood in the centre of the room while he closed the door. She watched him silently as he took off his hat and wig. As he poured liquid from a cut crystal decanter into two cut crystal glasses that turned the liquid inside the colour of blood. She held it up and said, "To innocence."

His lips pulled back in that cold cruel smile. "To the loss of it."

She expelled a brief harsh hash of a laugh. She drank her brandy in one gulp and put it down on the table. Now that she was grown as she'd ever be, she was almost as tall as he was. She only had to reach up a little to kiss him. She couldn't taste anything over the burn of the alcohol. She felt cold and distant. She wanted to feel warm and close. She wanted to be in her body and not in her head telling stories. She pulled at the soft velvet of his coat and the scratch of his lace shirt. She was not screaming. She was not hitting him. They were kissing with teeth. She hated everything in the world.

He slid his hook under each button and cut them open. The letter crackled in her shirt and pirate cruel, he said, "Is that a thimble? She answered by twisting fingers in his hair and pulling.

He made of her skirt and underwear the next victims. They grappled and tumbled on the swaying ship onto those silk sheets that he'd promised her. They were cold at her back.

They made them warm through motion. She kissed his cruel mouth. She tasted blood. She bit his shoulder. He responded in kind with teeth and tongue at her breasts. His cold hook warmed itself sliding its curve back and forth between her legs.

She scratched his back with calloused hands and battered fingernails and cried out some garble of words and curses. She took his mouth. She exchanged another volley of biting kisses until he gave way to what she wanted. Until he was thrusting inside her with silk sheets at her back and the only thing keeping her from sliding into the wooden wall was her grip biting into him.

It wasn't even remotely making love or simple sex. They fucked until they both gave out with strangled cries. At least he was a gentleman enough not to collapse on her afterwards. He held himself braced above her, panting.

She opened her eyes and looked at him. She said, "There. I've lost my innocence."

He pulled out of her and rolled to one side. He pushed back a lock of hair with his hook. "And when may I expect your brother's daring rescue?"

She looked at him with dry eyes. "I'm twenty-four. This was not my first time and there's no one left to come save me."

He kissed her shoulder. "Have you thought about my offer to join my crew?"

She bit her lip. "You must give me some time to think about it."

"Of course." He swung his legs off the bed. "Take as much time as you need." He scooped her clothes up from the floor and tossed them out the door of his cabin with a barked order, "Mr. Smee, sew these up." He turned back to her, retrieving his glass of brandy. "That may take him some hours." He should have looked ridiculous, sipping brandy without a stitch on, but he didn't. He looked like the Captain of his domain. She propped herself up on an elbow and accepted the glass he handed her.

This one she sipped. She dipped a finger in it and traced the places where she'd bitten and scratched him. He returned the favour. He traced complicated patterns on her. He explored all of her with the tip of his hook.

The second time was still fucking. It simply took longer and went slower. They took their time. They fell asleep tangled with each other.

She woke up feeling sore in head and body. She climbed over him. He woke up and watched her as a tiger might do. She peeked out the door. Her clothes were neatly folded in a pile. She put them on.

She did the walk of shame past a boat load of pirates.

The pirate with the yellow matted hair said, "Wendy, would you tell us a story?"

She paused in the process of fidgeting with her shirt. The letter in her pocket crinkled. She nodded and sat down on the same crate where she'd sat before and told the pirates a story about the further adventures of Red-Handed Jill battling the Scylla and the Charybdis and the sea goddess keeping her enemy, Gentleman Jack, prisoner at the bottom of the sea.

When she was done, Hook had put back on all his layers, and was pacing behind his crew.

She walked from the docks with an honour guard of pirates. They went to the yard where the milkmen parked the trucks that went out the farms to collect the day's milk.

Hook kissed her hand, "Until the next time."

She was pretty sure that this was it and the world would be gone in a day or two. "Sure."

As the truck came to the top of the hill, she looked back.

The Jolly Roger was in full sail on the horizon. The truck went round a curve before she could see it disappear.


	3. 36

Wendy stood by the window and watched her daughter fly away with Peter Pan. Dark shapes that quickly disappeared into the clouds. Wendy smiled ruefully and whispered, "Third star to the right and straight on until morning." It had been almost twenty years now since she'd made that flight herself from this very window. The curtains were more faded now. The fortunes of this house more slender.

The house was quiet.

Wendy was alone.

There was no excited little girl to run down the halls and jump on Wendy's bed and throw her ball indoors and pick up after and patch up when she hurt herself and sing to sleep when she was weary. Wendy felt as the earth would feel if the sun around which it orbited were to disappear, or perhaps simply reversed in its orbit to turn back time.

She could hear all the sounds of the street and the city beyond.

She could stay in. She could go out. She could relive her lost twenties. She could go out as she'd used to do and paint London town with all the other broken young things.

She drew the curtains closed to keep the chill out and went to the kitchen to put the kettle on.

Wendy had lost her taste for bad boys with her mad self nine months before she had Jane, and she realized she barely remembered the name of Jane's father. The last ten years hadn't been easy, but she didn't regret them.

She was just settling down with a cup of tea, when her house was boarded by pirates.

They slammed open the door and trampled on the carpets and rattled the china in the china cabinet. She tightened the belt on her robe and picked up a butcher's knife. She pointed it at the pirate with the braid at his temple – how had she never noticed that he was just a boy - maybe eighteen. "Put the silverware down."

"Yes, Ma'am." He put down the candlesticks that he was attempting to stuff down his shirt.

She went to the front hall. Hook was examining his moustache in the entryway mirror.

She wanted to cross her arms over her breasts, but then she'd stab herself with the knife. "Peter flew away with my daughter over an hour ago."

Hook crossed the front hall in two steps and took possession of the hand holding the butcher's knife. He kissed the back of that hand. "Pardon me, but the men will double check that he's gone."

She pulled her hand away. There were pirates on the stairs. There were pirates in the front room. There was a crash of glass upstairs. She met Hook's gaze. "I'll put out the glue for Mr. Smee shall I?"

His response was to very dramatically run up the stairs. "Smee!" It had been a long time since she'd had time or energy to admire a man's legs climbing a set of stairs.

She pulled out the glue and put it on the dining room table. When she'd been younger, there hadn't been a vase in the house that hadn't needed to be glued back together with so many boys about the place. She closed her eyes for a moment and all the footsteps put her back decades.

She felt the pang that she supposed she'd always carry for all the adventures they'd never have, those lost boys of a lost generation.

She looked fondly at the pirate with the lattice work of tattoos. John had so wanted to get a tattoo. He would have loved it if they'd been invaded by pirates just once.

Which settled it to her mind. She was making sugar cookies. She made a pot of tea, and set to mixing.

While she was putting the trays in the oven, a pirate with a blue striped shirt came to check the cupboards. When he was done, she let him lick the spoon. Michael had loved to do that when she made cookies.

She was pulling the trays out by the time Hook choose to make his grand entrance. "That cocksure boy isn't here."

She waved a mittened hand at the empty tea cup on the kitchen table and the pot in its cozy. "Sorry, but you'll have to play mother for yourself."

He poured himself a cup. He watched her move about her homey little kitchen with its yellow walls from over the top as a tiger might do were a tiger to drink tea. He sipped from time to time, but mostly he watched her. She felt every inch of her skin and all the things they'd done the last time they'd met and all the things they hadn't done and could yet do.

They were about the same age now. Hook stopping at some midpoint. She sailing on by in the course of her life.

She sat in the kitchen of her childhood and thought about all the times Mother and Father had gone out doing adult things like the theatre and opera and concerts. It had all seemed so dull and later the world so broken that she'd never done any of that.

It was still early. There was still time.

As she was thinking all of this, Hook said, "Wendy, it's far too early for you to be in this state of undress. If you would do me the honour, I've pirate's gold to spend and the West End is waiting with its entertainments."

She had the odd thought that of all the men she'd ever wrapped her legs around and grappled with in the dark, Hook was the only one likely to know that the phrase "making the two backed beast" was from Shakespeare, and by far the most polite on the occasions he wasn't attempting to have her walk the plank.

She said, "I'll put on my prettiest frock." She thought about this. "Provided that they haven't searched for Peter inside it."

She passed Mr. Smee and the pirate with the wee parrot laying out shards of things on her dining room table. The pot of glue was in prominent display.

There weren't so many dresses to choose from that it took her long, and fortunately the fashion of the age was far simpler than when she was a girl watching Mother get ready for a night out.

So, mismatched in garments and eras as they were, they caught a cab to the West End. As they went, Hook looked out the window of the car, his hat in his lap. He said, "Every time I return, London changes. She's gotten so that I hardly recognize her." He smiled that thin curved smile full of promises illuminated only by the yellow street lights. "It's always a pleasure to explore her new secrets." 

They washed ashore at the Winter Garden Theatre where they watched Adele Astaire and her brother Fred dance as if they were made by Terpsichore in "Funny Face". The music sounded as if it were made of running light and she drank a glass of champagne.  
They went dancing at a rooftop club. Her hand curled around the curve of his hook, his right hand firm in the small of her back. He spun her round and she felt the stretch of her body in motion. She was dizzy from more than just that one glass of bubbling wine.

She knew that the people around them were whispering and watching. But in that moment, she didn't care. None of them knew that he was a pirate and not an eccentric. Perhaps he was an eccentric pirate. He did sail the seven seas to a land of Never. She laughed and spun.

Finally, the night took them home. The pirates were drinking tea and listening to music on the radio. All that was left of the cookies were crumbs and a scattering of trays.

She said, "Would you like a story before I send you off?"

"If you please," said the pirate with the yellow matted hair.

She told them a story about the adventures of Red-Handed Jill and the Aztec treasure on the Barbary Coast. It was a ridiculous mishmash of locations and eras. She put everything in and the kitchen sink, as Red-Handed Jill and her bitter rival, Gentleman Jack, raced to claim the treasure. Red-Handed Jill won out, of course. She kissed Gentleman Jack and then left him behind to sail into the sunset with her ship full of gold.

The pirates gasped and clapped and cheered and stumbled out her front door, until all that was left was Hook. He said, "After all of that, it seems bad form that Gentleman Jack gained only a kiss."

She laughed still dizzy on the night.

She was still in that mood, when Hook had her dress unzipped to her waist and her braisiere neatly unhooked and flung aside to dangle off the newel post. He had her bent back over the railing the better to plunder at her breasts. She filled with gasping breaths. She was but a minute away from wrapping her legs around him then and there, but a few yards from the door and the street beyond. She breathed in the smell of sweat and life. She pushed him back saying, "I'm too old for sex on the stairs." She pulled him up the stairs. "My bed doesn't have silk sheets, but the cotton is old and soft."

Once in her room, she removed the rest of her layers, while he removed his own.

It wasn't making love. It also wasn't fucking. They didn't tear into each other. Storyteller, she didn't have a name for it. 

They explored with hands and sensitive lips. She felt known. She felt seen, not as Jane's Mother, who'd washed up unwed at her own Mother's door and stayed there, but as a woman.

If she was too old for coupling in strange places, she was too young for the chances she'd taken in her youth. A child by a pirate seemed a terrible idea. He chuckled when she rolled the condom that she'd acquired at the beginning of the night on to him. A chuckle was on odd sound from him, but she gave him one back. She pushed him back and slowly sank onto him. She felt like the sail upon a mast filled with the wind. She felt like the mermaid on the prow of a ship, exposed to the kiss of the sea. She felt like a woman laughing as she slowly pushed and pulled a man into her.

Slow until it was fast, because he was a pirate and for a little while so was she.

When she came, she laughed until she was breathless at how alive she felt.

Afterwards, they lay together on her soft cotton sheets. They faced each other in the bed. Not cuddling, but idly tangling fingers and legs. He said, "Have you considered my offer to join my crew?"

She smoothed his moustache with a finger. "I will need some time to think about it."

"Of course." He got up and folded the covers back over her. "You must take your time."

As he closed the door to her room, she stretched out and fell asleep contemplating the familiar creaking of her home.


	4. 60

Her granddaughter, Margaret, had returned from Neverland last night and it was as if the house had come alive again.

Wendy listened to Margaret chatter on about mermaids. She went to make tea.

The old house creaked. 

Truth be told, Wendy felt like she was creaking just as badly. She went through the same motions she'd gone through a thousand times before in all the same rooms on all the same courses she'd been on her entire life.

It seemed a few short years ago that Jane had gone to Neverland, so quickly fleeting, 

Wendy's home had been boarded by pirates each spring. She'd learned that Philip, with his eternally matted yellow hair, loved bluebells. She'd learned that the wee parrot's name was Took, and his owner, Tamur, drank rum in his milk. She learned that she was not in fact too old to have sex on the stairs.

Although, she supposed she was now. The year that Jane lay weeping in her room because she was too old, because Peter forgot to come, Wendy had barred the pirates at the door. She'd felt full of gravity and maturity and the Motherly rightness of turning them all away. She'd told herself that she was too old for such things. For wasting her time on a pirate who visited, but once a year. Hook had bowed with his hat, "Until next time."

She'd closed the door without saying any other word. 

Wendy hadn't cried. Not as Jane had cried, weeping as if her body would break, while Wendy held her little girl, who was growing up. The next week, Wendy had accepted an invitation from a friend of a friend for luncheon. 

It was sedate. It was mature. 

She'd lied and told him that her husband died in the war, and didn't say which one. She'd made a story of who she was and tried to be it.

That lasted in truth for far longer than it should have.

Now here she was the old woman in the house that was more her daughter's than her own. 

Her granddaughter whisked away to Neverland in the spring. When Margaret had left, Wendy'd waited on the porch for the pirates with a basket of cookies and a butcher's knife. She'd said, "Peter is not here and no you can't look for him. Jane's upstairs with her husband, who doesn't understand any of this."

She'd looked at Hook, who looked so young. It was funny the perspective that nearly fifty years knowing someone put on things.

She'd smiled expecting something horrible at last, and been whisked away to the West End to explore what London had to offer. She didn't bother with condoms. She was too old for them now. But when he'd asked about his offer, she'd still told him that she had to think about it. She wasn't ready to give her answer.

From up the stairs, she could hear Margaret re-enacting all she'd done with happy screams and laughter, and wondered suddenly that there were only ever pirates in the spring, when adventures started. Never in the end of summer, when they ended. Peter visited each time just the same.

She felt quite suddenly as if her skin was too tight. She felt as if the kitchen was too small. All the horizons she'd imagined, narrowed down to this room.

She opened her hand and watched her cup tumble to the floor and shatter. A pirate had drunk from that cup once. It was true of most of the cups in this house.

She laughed at herself and went to clean up the pieces. She did not intend to glue it back together.

The clock down the hall chimed the hour.

Wendy pulled the butcher knife from the block. She wrapped it in a towel and put it in her largest purse. She wrote a note on the kitchen table. "Off on an adventure. W."

She put on her coat and walked out the front door. She walked down to the river. She told the muddy water flowing away, "Captain James Hook. I'm ready to make my decision."

She walked for a bit. She was wearing comfortable shoes and it was a pleasant day. By the time she made it to the Tower, she heard a half remembered footstep. A voice like blue smoke said, "Mistress Wendy, I believe you said you had an answer for me."

She looked at him fondly. He looked the same as he always did. His black wig and hat. His frock coat and breeches. All of which should have made him ridiculous. Certainly, he was attracting stares from men in serious grey or black suits, looking as if they'd forgotten the idea of colour even though the shortages from the last war were just a distant memory.

She pulled the butcher's knife out of her purse and brushed the tip along the line of his chin. "Do you still want me as a part of your crew?"

He pushed the tip of the blade aside with his hook. "I'm a pirate. I don't ask for things I have no desire to have."

"Then," she smiled, "I would like to run off to sea."

His thin lips curled back from his teeth. "I had every expectation that this would be your answer."

It really was a marvellous adventure. 

Especially when Red-Handed Jill stole her own ship from Davy Jones himself. 

After all, Wendy had never been the sort to end her stories with the kiss.


	5. [Podfic] The the tale of Red-Handed Jill

[Download this story (right click and save)](http://fresne.podbean.com/mf/web/jzw74m/redhandedjill.mp3)

[Listen to this story](http://fresne.podbean.com/mf/play/jzw74m/redhandedjill.mp3)

Length: 43.03 minutes

[Archived](http://www.audiofic.jinjurly.com/tale-of-red-handed-jill)

**Author's Note:**

> If after reading my fiction here, you would like to read more about me and my writing check out my profile.


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